Jacolby SatterwhiteNew York, NY

Artist’s Statement

I use video, performance, 3D animation, fibers, drawing and printmaking to explore themes of memory, desire, personal and public mythology. My recent body work "The Matriarch's Rhapsody" utilizes my mother’s drawings and music recordings as a primary resource. My mother created songs of desire and thousands of schematic drawings/inventions influenced by consumer culture, medicine, fashion, surrealism, math, sex, astrology, philosophy, and matrilineal concerns. The drawings are mostly of common objects and luxury products found in the domestic sphere. The Matriarch's Rhapsody's title stems from the action of repurposing everyday objects drawn by my mother, and queering their meaning in a performative animated narrative. My practice has it's roots in dada, surrealist, and fluxus attitudes. I pair down multiple drawings and create a time based narrative out of a nonsensical intersection of the text, rendered objects and dance performance. I am interested in process as a meta narrative; the narrative between a mother & and son's studio practices, the narrative between past, present, and future, and the narrative between mediums. My body and art facility, as an extension/interpretation of my mother’s voice and drawings, is an attempt to examine memory, insider/ outsider art practices, contemporary surrealist practices, queer phenomenology and push the tensions.

Jacolby Satterwhite received a MFA from UPENN, Philadelphia in 2010; a BFA from the MICA, Baltimore in2008 and completed a residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009. Satterwhite is a 2014 participant in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and New Frontier, Sundance Film Festival. Satterwhite also participated in “Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art” at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, and Approximately Infinite Universe, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego California in 2013. His work has recently been exhibited in “Shift: Projects | Perspectives | Directions”, Fore, and “When the Stars Begin To Fall” at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His videos have been featured on “First Look: New Art Online: Aboveground Animation: 3D-Form”, The New Museum; a Solo show at Monya Rowe Gallery; Sessions at Recess Activities, and a two solo shows at Mallorca Landings gallery in Palme De Mallorca, Spain.